Macroscope

February 27, 2015

Since he's a baby boomer, his formative years were in the wake of Kennedy's New Frontier, when being an astronaut was considered the pinnacle of individual human achievement. So, within that context, a television show about The Final Frontier couldn't help but be his favorite.

Needless to say, since I didn't come around until 4 years after the original "Star Trek" had been cancelled, we pretty much watched whatever my brother wanted to watch.

Which, frankly, was fine, because that show is still, probably, my favorite of all time. I'm sure can practically recite entire episodes by heart.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that, when I was 9 years old, the whole family, cousins and all, went to the theater to see "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan".

As I've said before on this blog, I cried my eyes out at the end of that movie, when Spock died.

I mean, we went home, and had dinner, and I was still crying, to the point where my father had to take me from the table, sit my down on the living room couch, put an arm around me, and say "I'm sure Mr. Spock is going to be alright."

Which, was, of course, true, all the way up until today.

Now, as I mention in my book, The Savior Inside You
, I absolutely wanted to be Captain Kirk. I mean, who wouldn't, right? He was the hero. He was in charge. Everybody looked up to him. He was smart and cool and brave. He got all the girls.

But everybody knows that Captain Kirk needs his best buddies, Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock. Now, most people have someone in their lives who can provide the folksy, down-home, irascible wisdom that DeForest Kelly spun each week as the ship's chief surgeon. But no one had ever met anyone quite like Mr. Spock.

Mr. Spock was the true soul of "Star Trek". If the mantra of the show was to seek out new life and new civilizations, we, as the viewers, could literally do that every week just by tuning in and spending time with Spock.

The weird thing about TV characters is that, you see them week after week, you inhabit their fictional lives, you are compelled to care about them, to the point that some of us lose the ability to distinguish between the character and the actors that portray them.

So, beyond "Star Trek" reruns, I also spent a good chunk of my early 70's TV watching with Leonard Nimoy being my guide to the mysteries of the world through the old TV series "In Search Of."
In short, Leonard Nimoy, a man I'd never met, came to feel like a true family friend.

That is the beautifully weird alchemy that happens when you mix writing with performance to create a character that moves you like the living, breathing people in your life.

Oddly enough, on this day, when the world mourns Leonard Nimoy's passing, I find myself filled with more wistful gratitude than sadness. I am so very grateful how Mr. Nimoy's skill as an actor helped open my mind and heart to so much over the years. In a very weird way, I'm grateful for his virtual companionship, as I suspect are so many others.

I guess I was wrong about there never being a class of people who could reasonably expect to acquire wealth
without having done any real material work to attain it. After all, mass media wasn’t invented with
radio and TV.

It was Gutenberg with the printing
press, and the first product was The Bible.

The irony is that, like so many
other money making products, as soon as something is successful, people
immediately set out to copy it. After
Hunger Games, the market was flooded with young adult actioneer novels. After Karloff’s Frankenstein, the theaters
were filled to the brim with monster movies.

And, for better or for worse, after
the success of the Christian church, everyone and their mother wanted to sell
you on salvation.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll probably recognize some familiar themes, but I think it's safe to say that I've gone a bit deeper and, frankly, even more personal than usual. As always, if you're a fan of my writing, I definitely encourage you to pick it up. And, if you like it, please share it and add your voice via comments and reviews on Amazon.com.

October 06, 2014

I graduated from high school on June 11, 1991 and as important as that milestone happens to be in my life, the date has double significance because the next most important thing I had to do that evening was camp out to watch the series finale for Twin Peaks.

The logline is simple enough: an investigation into the brutal murder of the local homecoming queen in a seemingly idyllic Pacific Northwest town draws in esoteric FBI agent to uncover all of the mysteries, seen and unseeable, hidden within.

Landmark for both its cinematic style (when most tv was still being shot like theater) and it's completely original tone (how can one show be both the most hilarious and most terrifying thing you've ever seen in your living room?) nothing really compares to the impact that show has had on pop culture.

So I nearly jumped out of my seat to learn that David Lynch and Mark Frost are bringing back, just like Laura Palmer promised, 25 years later to Showtime.

I love this show and these characters, but I hope my nostalgia doesn't blind me to the high wire act this could be. Mixing old and new casts in revivals rarely works ("Dallas", "Get Smart", "Star Trek: Generations", and soon "Star Wars"?) And as much as I would love to see Sherilyn Fenn return as my high school crush Audrey Horne, I hope the creators realize that the vibe and the atmosphere is what made that show work. Audrey and Cooper and Dr. Jacoby and Bobby Briggs can't be who they were 25 years ago. But that doesn't mean new characters can't fill those roles and that these old characters don't have a place beside them.

August 02, 2013

Since I met my wife nearly five years ago, my life and social circle has taken on a decidedly more global and international slant. I often find myself as the the only American in the room, which, frankly, has become much easier to handle when Barack Obama was elected president. But when I'm in a room of international folks, especially lots of Africans, I find myself realizing just how uniquely American we African-Americans are. Despite our (to put it lightly) troubled history with this country, we still have cultural traditions that are unique to our experience in America that we should rightly feel proud of. For instance, I come from a family that, for years, has taken deep pride in military service, and that is a strain in African-American culture that weaves itself through American history all the way back to, I suspect, Crispus Attucks. And at every step of this long experiment, in every corner of every story that is part of the American epic, African Americans are there.

I absolutely love all of the cultures of Africa that I've encountered, particularly exploring the differences and similarities between Ghanaians and Nigerians and Ugandans and Kenyans, et. al. I share in their irritation when someone ignorantly speaks of "Africa" like a single country and denies their distinctiveness. But I also bristle a bit at African-Americans who speak wistfully about "returning" to Africa. Africa, the continent, and the 50+ nations within it are about as new and different to the average African-American as Europe or Asia. We can immigrate there to join our extended family in the diaspora, but the only African-Americans who can return there are recently naturalized visitors and our long dead ancestors.

Anyway, I've been recently a bit obsessed with modern Western culture after stumbling across a rodeo event on cable - which was quiet thrilling, btw. It's a side of America that I think is most considered and imagined outside of our country, but exists as it's own world within our world, often hidden from the broader American media discourse. So, this video I found on Vimeo really grabbed me, both for its cinematic beauty and its content. Enjoy.

What's equally interesting to me is that the cowboy tradition is really just the most recent version of the Vaquero trade that was brought over to the Americas by the Spanish, so even something as uniquely American as the cowboy has his roots in a culture of color.

July 29, 2013

Nearly six years ago, I wrote a post called "What Happened To The Future?" where I cried and moaned about the lack of imagination in much of what passes for modern sci-fi. Basically, we're all just retreading ground already laid by Ridley Scott and Philip K. Dick instead of introducing and proposing new worlds, new frontiers, new questions, etc.

Now, my complaint was born largely of boredom and artistic longing. But engineer/entrepreneur/would-be NYC mayor Jack Hidary suggests something deeper in this great little video from The XPRIZE Foundation (the people who sponsor competitions for innovations that can provide solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems). Hidary suggests that science fiction serves a social purpose beyond mere entertainment. And, frankly, I agree with him.

There's a line in the pilot for David Goyer's new show "Da Vinci's Demons", where the fictional Leonardo says that anything that can be dreamt of can eventually be built by someone. But you have to have the dream first, and it's the responsibility of artists of all stripes to seed our imaginations so that there actually are dreams to harvest in the autumn of our worlds.

John Carter Teaser Trailer#johncarter This was the best trailer I'd seen in years. Why? Because it made me want to watch a movie I had to turn off after the first ten minutes. They get around the big explosions problem by finding a piece of music that perfectly captures a FEELING that's at the heart of this story (after all, the original book was called "A Princess of Mars"), and then they cut the highlight scenes to match the building pace of the music. It effectively hides the horrible cgi characters that overpopulate and kill the movie. You feel like you get hints of something sweeping and romantic. It feels like David Lean doing a sci-fi film. Which says to me that there is actually an opening in the marketplace for a film just like that: something epic and grand and passionate set on other worlds. But, frankly, it hasn't been made yet. Star Wars: Episode II wanted you to think that it was it. Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune could have been that (if he'd made it a 4 hour movie w an intermission, where the first half was Dune, the 2nd have was Dune Messiah, and the love story is about Paul and Chani). But no one has done it yet.

July 23, 2013

KI'd written a long screed about how the media frenzy around the birth of the latest royal baby was just another example of our decadent culture when I suddenly had a moment of clarity.

I realized I was only writing it because I thought it was provocative enough to get people to read it. Moreover, I realized that the content I was putting into the atmosphere was venal and had no redeeming value other than to boost views for my blog.

Just like the very culture I was condemning.

And all of this shallowness over something beautiful and profound.

Much like this very post.

I guess I can only get so far outside of this particular box yet. But recognition is the first step to resolution for any problem.

July 14, 2013

For anyone who's been reading my blog recently, I'm sure the title of this post is a bit surprising.

But it's Sunday.

I have so many thoughts and feelings going through me right now. But let me start with the Black Panther Party.

Most people don't know that the full name of the organization was "The Black Panther Party for Self Defense", which was originally conceived as a response to police brutality. In addition to using California's open carry laws to defiantly confront law enforcement with their own weapons, people forget that the Panthers also feed the hungry, clothed the needy, and even organized schools for the children in their neighborhoods.

They forget because the sight of Huey Newton walking into the California State Assembly brandishing a shotgun overpowers any story about school lunches or clothing drives.

Guns have a tendency to do that.

If you'd like to know what happened to the Black Panthers, don't look at these impostors who are occasionally trotted out on Fox News as if they were Emmanuel Goldstein from the book "Nineteen Eighty-Four." According to the documentary "Bastards of the Party", you should look at the Crips, the notorious LA street gang, which, after years of sabotage from law enforcement, violence, arrests, political pressure, and the introduction of the drug trade, is what the Los Angeles Panthers devolved to in the late 70's. Most of the prominent leaders of the party are either dead, in prison, or in exile.

Guns have a tendency to do that, too.

In "Bastards of the Party", the filmmaker, a former gangbanger, lamented the cycle of violence, where you feel compelled to kill the people who killed your friend, just like they felt compelled to kill members of the gang who killed their friend, and so on, and so on, and so on.

In the end, he said that the only way he could help brake the cycle was if he chose NOT to seek revenge on the people who'd murdered one of his family members.

As one of my friends, an AME minister, once pointed out to me, mercy is where you give someone something they don't deserve, but GRACE is where you don't give someone exactly what they deserve.

It's Sunday, and despite the pain and fear in my heart, grace is on my mind, because it's what Christ would ask of me in this moment.

My old film school instructor once said that, according to Catholic canon, the definition of a miracle is any moment where fear is transformed into love.

It was fear that led that jury to say George Zimmerman was justified in stalking and killing an unarmed Black teen. It was fear that led Zimmerman to arm himself and appoint himself protector of the neighborhood.

And as angry and as fearful as I've been since the verdict, as much as I've imagined being Trayvon (I can not tell you how many times I've walked home at night from the store wearing a hoodie) and, being someone who hopes to be a Black father one day in an affluent and largely white suburb of Los Angeles, as much as I've imagined the unspeakable pain of his parents, Christ calls me to also imagine being George Zimmerman.

This is a man who wanted to be a hero, a small man who dreamed of pride and respect from being a protector and defender. Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine he would become one of the most hated men in America because of his own prejudice and fear. Ironically enough, his unspoken fear of African Americans has transformed into a very real and, sadly, justifiable fear after this whole business.

There will be plenty of time for lawsuits and recriminations and acrimony.

But today is Sunday, and so, in addition for praying for Trayvon's soul, I'm also praying for George Zimmerman and his soul. I am digging deep into my heart to find, if not love, a measure of empathy for a man who has rightly earned my rage. In the same way, I pray for the jurors. I pray that my heart and my prayers can reach out to those who would fear me, my sons, and those that look like us for no reason and feel justified in our murder.

I'm sending them love to cancel out their fear.

I'm praying for them because America needs a miracle.

For George Zimmerman, I can only say what the priest said to Jean Valjean: "I've bought your soul. No go forth and be a good man."

For Travyon's parents, I'll ask for their forgiveness.

And for Trayvon, well, he's with God right now, so he already knows what's right.

July 09, 2013

Before an armed stranger stalked him in the middle of the night, Trayvon Martin had committed no crimes.

None.

Up until the moment a man with a gun started chasing him.

For no reason.

Let me repeat that.

A complete stranger with a GUN was stalking him at night.

Not a cop or a security guard. Not even a man who owned a property where Trayvon was trespassing. A total stranger with absolutely NO authority of any kind whatsoever was STALKING HIM WITH A GUN.
And Trayvon had committed no crimes.

A court of his peers may decide that George Zimmerman did not, according to the letter of the law, murder Trayvon Martin (and, sadly, that does sound like the direction we're heading).

But I guarantee you that George Zimmerman knows, in his heart, that he is a murderer.

And that thought either makes him feel remorse or it makes him feel pride.